As shown in the three prior United States Letters Patents identified above, it has become somewhat common practice to heat elongated, cylindrical workpieces by resistance techniques preparatory to quench hardening of these devices. Such heating operations involve the use of spaced electrodes which clamp onto the outer surface of the workpiece at axially spaced positions so that the center portion of the workpiece can be heated by passing a current between the electrodes and through the central portion. Generally, resistance heating devices are manually loaded and unloaded. This requires a substantial amount of manpower and constant attention to the device. Thus, there has been a substantial demand for automatically feeding elongated workpieces to the heating position of a resistance heating device. The difficulty with providing a feeding arrangement for the cylindrical workpieces is that the workpieces must be loaded and unloaded from the open side of the axially spaced electrodes. Thus, the loading and unloading must be done in the same general direction and using the same work area. This presents interference problems, since the feeding and discharging operation must occupy and function in the same space. Another difficulty is inherent in feeding workpieces to a resistance heating device. The workpieces must be unobstructed at their axial ends. Thus, the support must be spaced inwardly from the axial ends and the workpieces must be axially aligned to provide proper heating of the center portion during the heating operation.